The communications industry has developed a number of efficient throughput, wireless packet-based communication methodologies or protocols (such as IEEE standard 802.11a internet protocol) that are intended for use within an office or intra-building environment, where transmission distances are relatively close (e.g., on the order of one to several hundred feet). While these protocols work reasonably well for such ‘nested’ or ‘quasi-nested’ local area networks (LANs), they are not readily suited for use with extended range applications (e.g., on the order of several tens of miles or more).
This latter type of environment suffers from the problem diagrammatically illustrated in FIG. 1, specifically the substantial transport delay that results from having to return an acknowledgement (ACK or NACK) transmission for each successively transmitted packet. (For example, the MAC acknowledgement layer of the above-referenced 802.11a protocol returns an ACK for each packet.) This problem is particularly noticeable in networks containing a large number of transmitters that must communicate over large distances with a reception/processing or relay site.